//------------------------------// // Chapter 2 // Story: Pippin' Ain't Easy // by Rust //------------------------------// Chapter 2 “YES, THAT ONE WILL DO. THAT IS THE ADORABLE PONY WAIF I HAVE COME TO COLLECT.” The minotaur continued to single Pip out of the crowd, daring Mister Wood to try and say otherwise. “Oh, u-um. You’re quite sure, then...?” There was a weighty pause as the stallion tried to think of the paperwork and legalese that he was sure was usually involved in these sorts of things...but Celestia almighty, that creature’s fingers had pecs. “YES,” the monster grumbled as he reached clear over the heads of everypony in the room to wrap his fist around Pipsqueak’s body. “I AM PERFORMING A PERFECTLY LEGAL ADOPTION. OF THIS COLT.” Before Pipsqueak could scream (for help or in victory, he couldn’t say), the minotaur stuffed him whole into a large leather knapsack slung over his shoulder. His captor shimmied back through the doorway, compressing his gargantuan bulk until he could fit back through. “THANK YOU,” he added. “GOODBYE.” The wooden door thundered shut, splintering on impact. Pipsqueak watched the village of Ponyville pass him by from his sidesaddle seat in the bag. Ponies parted around the minotaur as he lumbered past. Whoever couldn’t move fast enough found themselves picked up and placed neatly ten to twenty yards away, based on the arc of his throw and whether or not he spied a pegasus to aim at. “Um...excuse me,” Pip mumbled. He tapped on the mountain’s side. “HM?” One gigantic, baleful eye turned down towards him. His attention taken away from the busy market street ahead of him, Pip’s ride began stepping on anything in his path instead. “Well, um...Mister Monster...” “LONGHORN.” A brilliantly pink mare tried to leap into his path with a smile on her face, surveyed the carnage behind him, and went home to party another day. “Sorry, what?” “LONGHORN. IS MY NAME. MY HORNS. ARE LONG.” “Oh. So they are,” the colt observed quietly. “So, um, Mister Longhorn...are you gonna be my dad from now on? N-not that there’s anythin’ wrong with that!” That single, burning eye had turned back on him in full force, and Pip found himself sinking deeper into the sack. From somewhere above came a horrific sound, starting low and gaining intensity with each ground-shaking step. It sounded like trains colliding at the Ponyville Station. Longhorn was laughing. “HEH. DAD. CUTE. VERY FUNNY, BOSS.” The market crowd began to thin around them, partially due to the lack of shops on this block and partially due to Longhorn’s efforts. “So that’s a no?” Pip breathed a sigh of relief; while he was sure he’d win any “my dad could beat up your dad” games for the foreseeable future, having a minotaur for a breadwinner would have been a little strange. “Wait...boss?” “THERE IS A LETTER. READ IT.” Longhorn scratched at his chest absentmindedly as Pip looked around inside the bag. “UNDER. YOUR ASS.” “Oh,” Pip yelped. True enough, a thick, brown envelope was tucked away at the bottom of the sack. Sealed in black wax and spattered with a light spray of blood, it was the single most interesting thing Pipsqueak had ever held. He inspected the scattered crimson droplets before shrugging and tearing the envelope open. “Bugger me if that ain’t right foreboding.” The letter eased out of the envelope with a faint scent of Marelot red and a breezy hint of basil. Dear Pipsqueak, it began. If you’re reading this, that means they finally got me. I don’t know who, and I don’t know how, but Celestia knows I probably deserved it. I never should have run away all those years ago, that night your mother passed away. Pip blinked. His mother...? He continued reading. Her body hadn’t even cooled off, and I had left to drown myself in the harbor. I wasn’t thinking straight... it was the lowest point of my life. Maybe when you have a mare for yourself one day, you’ll understand how much it hurts to lose her. But that was no excuse for taking the coward’s way out. If it wasn’t for the big lummox who gave you this note, I would have done it, too. But he fished me out of the water and took me to Don Stripa, the local mafia boss. “Your life was forfeit, now it belongs to us,” Don said. I remember that so well... They took my name, my things, my mane... all connections to my past were severed and I was jumped in to the Zebrellis. You may remember hearing about them when you were smaller. They are the top crime family of Trottingham. Heh. Were the top. Months passed. I often thought of you, where you were, what kind of colt you would grow to become. I couldn’t go after you, though, in truth because I had no idea where you’d gone. The mob covers its tracks well, and all they would tell me was that you’d been dropped at an orphanage somewhere far away, somewhere I wouldn’t have to worry about you. “We are your family now,” they told me. I always hated them for that. So when I stabbed them all in the back, it wasn’t something that bothered me. The biggest crime family in Trottingham, laid low by one of their own. The media had a field day. And who should be left to crawl up out of the rubble? I did. Your father. “My what!?” Pip all but shrieked. He looked back at the beefy minotaur. “Mister Longhorn, are you quite sure this is all right?” The black biped held up his left hand, pointing to the palm with his other. Seared into the thick skin was a branding, one that was eerily recognizable. “I know that mark,” Pip murmured. It was a compass, half-opened to show it pointing resolutely North. “That was Da’s cutie mark.” He surprised himself by remembering. How many years had it been now? Longhorn rumbled, “THERE IS. NO. MISTAKE.” A nearby storefront canopy collapsed under the sheer rumbling of his voice. “Oh,” Pip said, then again, more quietly, “...oh.” He hesitantly returned to the letter. Once I had my revenge on the Zebrellis, I had to move fast to fill in the power vacuum. I called in my favors, used every dirty trick in the book and even invented a few new ones, and when the dust settled, I was standing at the top of the largest criminal empire in Trottingham. I vowed to give the city a new breed of criminal, one who wasn’t out to murder or steal. A criminal who could make his city great in ways that normal ponies never could. A criminal who used his influence to pull his fellows out of poverty and rebuild the streets from the ground up. And if you’re reading this, it means that criminal is dead. It was no secret somepony was after my head. I am The Don. The Don of Dons. With that much power... somepony is always gonna want to take it. Which is why, in the event of my death, I have instructed Longhorn here to open my private safe and give whatever he found within to my long lost son. That’s you, Pipsqueak, my number one son! Contained within the pages of this book is the blueprints to my master plan, a society that has no need for crime. I have named you the heir to my empire, Pip. All you need is in that book. Make me proud. — Da “YOUR FATHER,” Longhorn rumbled, “HE WAS A GOOD PONY. SAVED ME. FROM ZEBRELLIS. STARTED NEW FAMILY. NO MORE SLAVES.” He held his palm up in the sunlight again, gazing at it and his passenger before clenching his fist. “PROUD. TO WEAR HIS EMBLEM.” He looked almost wistful as he stared into the horizon, his tread now taking the two of them out of Ponyville proper and towards the train station. “You really miss him, huh?” The letter folded crisply and fit back into the envelope without fuss. Beside it rested a small black journal, dog-eared and worn from use. “HE WAS A GOOD PONY. GOOD BOSS.” Longhorn paused to toss a handful of golden bits at the ticketmaster outside the station. The stallion ducked before they made impact with his relatively fragile face. “GOOD FRIEND,” he concluded. Pipsqueak toyed with the frayed edges of his father’s notebook for a moment. Da had left all this for him? The father he had never known, had never spoken to? “Mister Longhorn, I don’t really understand this. How did The Don... my Da, how did he do good things by, well, doing bad things?” “POWER. IT GETS RESULTS. PONY BUREAUCRACY IS TOO FAT. TOO SLOW. YOUR FATHER, HE HAD POWER — HE DIDN’T HAVE TO PLAY THEIR RULES. THINGS THAT TAKE THEM MONTHS TO DECIDE, HE ACHIEVED IN DAYS.” Pip scratched at his head, not even sure what the word ‘bureaucracy’ meant. “Like wot?” Longhorn shrugged his mighty shoulders, causing the colt to brace himself against the rocking motion. “ANYTHING. EVERYTHING. NEW BUILDINGS. INFRASTRUCTURE. HELP THE POOR. REMOVE CORRUPT OFFICIALS.” Hmm. Pipsqueak had never thought about it that way before. “What about stealing stuff? That’s a crime, innit?” “HAHAHA!” boomed the minotaur. “THIS IS TRUE. BUT THE DON ONLY STOLE FROM CRIMINALS. THERE IS NO HONOR, NO CHALLENGE, NO FUN IN STEALING FROM ORDINARY PONIES.” “Rip off the bad guys... and help the good guys?” Pip grinned. “Wow. That’s really smart!” He rubbed a hoof across the book his father had left him. Being a criminal and all still didn’t settle right in his stomach, but if he was helping ponies in the end, that didn’t really matter, right? The colt’s logic seemed sound. “So...I s’pose I’m your new boss, then?” He hugged the book to himself, wrapping his short forelegs around the last piece of his family left to him. Longhorn nodded slowly before sitting at the turnstile. The bench shuddered uneasily beneath his weight. “D’you think I could be your friend too?” If Pipsqueak hadn’t been watching, he might have missed the tiny glimmer of a grin flash across his new bodyguard’s face.